A.G. Gancarski
In Jacksonville near the Legends Community Center on Saturday afternoon, Rev. Jesse Jackson delivered an urgent message to around 50 Democrats on hand.
Vote this year. And avoid what happened in 2000, when “the loser was the winner” because of “voter suppression.”
Jackson, in extemporaneous remarks designed to “remind allies to not surrender,” described a couple of elections decided by seemingly small, yet ultimately fateful, events.
Jackson described the 1960 election between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon as one example.
“Dr. King was in jail, Kennedy reached out, and Nixon did not,” which resulted in a re-polarization, sending “Lincoln Republicans” to support the Democrat and “Jefferson Davis Democrats” to support Nixon.
In 2000, meanwhile, “especially in this county,” proved that in voting, “each state sets its own rules.”
Jackson said “27,000 votes in Duval County were not counted in 2000,” and “the loser became the winner.”
Jackson peppered his remarks with call and response. Though the years have piled up and his voice isn’t what it was during his prime, the audience offered frequent affirmations of what the Chicago reverend was saying.
Jackson made the affirmative case for Hillary Clinton also, saying that the Democratic nominee “fights for the crown jewel of democracy.”
“I left Michigan this morning,” Jackson said, where “they do not have early voting.”
“Denying early voting is a form of suppression,” Jackson said, along with “technicalities and hanging chads.”
And for African-Americans, those denials of suffrage have consequence. Describing cracks in a sidewalk with grass growing through them, Jackson noted that “some of us know about living in the cracks, making it on broken pieces.”
Denied a living wage, reduced to temporary jobs without benefits, dealing with escalating student loan debt: this, said Jackson, is the reality for many.
Important Obama-era reforms, such as “affordable health care,” are essential in a world fraught with uncertainty, ensuring that people who lose their jobs don’t lose insurance.
“Racial justice and gender equality matter,” Jackson said, calling the current “march to the polls” the contemporary equivalent to “Selma and Montgomery” — a reference to the civil rights march in 1965.
“Vote and vote with passion. Last time, in 2000, victory was taken,” Jackson said.
When asked if there was the same enthusiasm in 2016 as there was in 2008 for Obama, Rev. Jackson surprised some by saying “basically, yes,” pointing out how high the stakes are, in terms of maintaining job growth, expanding insurance, and the need to “build on that success” on the banks and auto industry, each of which are better positioned than they were in 2008.
Jackson reviewed that change has happened in the “New South” since the days of the mid-century civil rights movement.
“We didn’t always get on the beach at St. Augustine,” Jackson said, or into “hotels and motels in Jacksonville.”
Jackson is headed to Tallahassee tomorrow, for a 1 p.m. Souls to the Polls event at the Adams Street Commons.
